Wednesday, January 13, 2010

I got a new mace from ICC tonight: [Trauma]. It replaced my mace from Ulduar.

It's rather underwhelming so far. The proc does like 0.6% of my healing.

According to Ghostcrawler:

Estimates of Bryntroll at 8 to 10% of dps seem exaggerated to us. Something at the 3 to 3.5% seems more typical. It should be eminently possible for healers to get 3 to 3.5% healing out of Trauma.

I'm not sure what data Ghostcrawler is seeing, but I get nothing close to this. And I'm usually healing tanks, so it should be hitting the melee DPS as well.

The worst part is that [Trauma] is pretty much the only upgrade for a healing paladin in ICC-25. The only other alternative is a sword with hit rating.

I hope Blizzard takes a look at this weapon and upgrades the proc effect for paladins.

As well, they really need to drop an alternative weapon type that paladins can use. The other healing classes get daggers and staves in addition to maces. Paladins can use caster swords, but Blizzard always seems to put hit rating on the swords, restricting the swords to the DPS casters.

Edit: I forgot to mention that in addition to being a lackluster proc, effect-wise, it also lacks flash, which is a very common complaint for healing effects. In comparison, [Nibelung] spawns Val'kyrs to smite your enemies for you! Why does healing never get the cool stylish effects?

Posted by
Rohan

18 comments:

I believe druids are seeing a bit higher numbers (see Elitist Jerks - Restoration Itemization), more around 2%, but that's still far from GC's 3-3.5%. Atm the main culprits for low overall healing of this proc seem to be the 10y range and group restriction and these are things that could be tuned in the future. So don't give up hope just yet :)

The resto shaman in my guild was arguing that Trauma was better than Val'anyr for all classes.

This is good evidence that, for holy paladins, it is not. On my world of logs meters, the shield effect from Val'anyr is usually around 10-15%! (and that's why I'm always trying to get above 85% overhealing)

Keep in mind that we have only opened 2/4 wings of ICC not to mention arthas himself. Untill all the wings and drops are released it is hard to judge. There may be an awesome healing sword in which the proc is better suited for holy paladins. In fact I'm counting on it because the only tanking sword in in ICC 25 is absolutely terrible. Not to mention there isn't a single tanking shield in 25 man.

Hard to make judgement calls like this when half the instance isn't out yet not to mention hardmodes.

What about the 10-man version of Trauma from Rotface, Lockjaw? Doesn't have a crappy proc and it has lower stats due to being only a level 251 mace, but it's still probably a solid upgrade from TotC. There's also Quel'dalar, Lens of the Mind which has pretty much perfect itemisation for a Holy Paladin, though again, it's only iLvl 251.

Honestly the lack of weapons in ICC25 is annoying. I have a frost DPS offspec for my Death Knight for raid utility (our guild lacks a raiding enhancement shaman) so I'm always looking for slow, one-handed weapons. Of which there are *none* in ICC25 at the moment. I don't think Blizzard will have forgotten to add some decent weapons for all specs in ICC25, they must just be further into the instance than we can currently advance.

I STILL get angry over Lok in BWL-it was the only weapon upgrade (aside from the Hexxer in Troll Land) from my damn Aurastone Hammer...and in all our time in BWL, it dropped twice. Went to a priest and a druid, who had other weapons to choose from.